Our Dried Voices

by Hickey, Greg

  Penny came up beside him. “What are they? Where did they come from?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know,” he replied. Besides their fellow colonists, they had never seen any other sentient beings before in their lives.

  The bizarre creatures paid them no mind. They swirled in a lazy herd about the meadow, stooping and chewing and snuffling, overtaking Samuel and Penny like puffy clouds carelessly blotting out the sun. Samuel receded as the creatures first approached, but they seemed harmless and he knew he would have to deal with them somehow. He took a hesitant step into the herd as it lapped around him. Penny grabbed half-heartedly at his arm, but he slipped out of her grasp without any effort. She followed in his wake. One of the animals looked at Samuel, its head turned sideways as its flat, glassy eye took him in but showed no more interest than if he were a tree or stone or blade of grass. Samuel stared back at the creature.

  “Hello,” Samuel said. The creature chewed slowly. “Are you a dog?”

  The creature gazed at him for a few seconds more, then turned away and continued its aimless pacing. Samuel looked back at Penny. She stood frozen. Across the meadow more groups of these animals plodded about, calm and unhurried, pausing occasionally to lower their heads and eat some grass or take a drink at the river. There were no other colonists in sight. One of the creatures passed very near to Samuel and he reached out a hand to let the coarse fibers covering its body brush through his fingers. The animal hardly noticed. The small herd engulfed them on all sides, neither advancing nor keeping their distance, a current pulsing against a pair of lily pads, wherever the mindless whim of nature may take it.

  The scrap of paper tied to one of the creature’s necks hit Samuel like a splash of icy water to recall him from a dream. He leapt forward and grabbed it, studied the drawing it bore in the now-distinctive scrawl of black crayon.

  Penny peered over his shoulder and asked, “What is it?”

  But Samuel could make no sense of the drawing. He tucked it away and stared around him, overcome by the significance of these animals milling about the meadow, by the concerted will it must have taken to bring them here. Who were these people? The stunning nature of the action, the very brazenness of displaying their message on one of the creatures they had so miraculously produced—they knew he had chased them from the meal halls the other night and they were taunting him now, daring him to even try to come so close to catching them again.

  The meal halls. He had seen them gathered outside one of the meal halls that night. It was as good a place to begin as any. Everything seemed in order when he reached the nearest hall. The door was closed and there was nothing amiss with the building’s exterior. Samuel circled to the back of the hall to investigate the smaller building that abutted it. Its walls were bare and polished, the same blank, off-white color as the hall, and as he came to the third side of the little building, he noticed a slight vertical crack in the exterior. He dug the broken window latch from his pocket and inserted it into this narrow seam. With considerable effort, he managed to pry back a nearly invisible panel that lay flush with the wall of the building. He slipped his fingers into the gap and opened the door wide enough to step inside.

  A floor-to-ceiling chain-link fence divided the entire interior of the building and sectioned off about a quarter of the room. The midday sun beamed in through a full glass roof just as strongly as it did outside, and rows of what looked like tiny suns lined the walls and produced such an abundance of light that Samuel was forced to shade his eyes. Rows and rows of various potted plants, species Samuel had never even imagined existed, packed the majority of the room. In each row the plants rested on a single continuous shelf, which inclined gradually all the way up to the glass ceiling, zig-zagging back and forth between the near and far walls. A metal grate with square holes the size of one of Samuel’s fingers divided the other quarter of the room into two levels, one on the ground and another just above Samuel’s head. Two troughs filled with water lined the long wall of this section, one on each of the two floors. A single brown creature, identical to those in the meadows, shuffled about all alone on the upper level.

  For a brief moment, the room was still and quiet, as though purposely giving Samuel ample opportunity to take it all in. Then all at once, everything sprang into motion. To Samuel’s right, the rows of plants began to move back and forth and slightly upward on shelves similar to the sliding platforms Samuel had observed in the tunnels of the food machines. As each box of plants reached the top of the room the motion of the conveyor pushed it into a hole in the opposite wall. At the same time, a panel in the floor next to each shelf opened, and a new box of mature plants was loaded into the vacant space at the bottom of each row.

  Samuel watched, mesmerized, until a groan of protest from the animal to his left broke his dumbfounded awe. He turned and saw a metal partition that ran the width of the pen had eased away from the far wall and was methodically pushing across the ground floor of the cage. On the second level, a similar panel drove out from the near wall in the opposite direction, forcing the hapless creature toward the far end of the cage, which narrowed to the width of a single animal. The creature turned to face the panel, pitted its shoulder against the cold steel and dug its feet into the grated floor. The bright metal barrier halted for a moment against this weight, but then the creature’s small, hard, circular feet slipped on the grille of the floor, and the panel pressed forward. The poor animal stumbled backward. It recovered and dug its shoulder against the barrier with even greater desperation, but its first effort had sapped its strength. Its persistent moans increased in pitch and breathlessness as the panel drove inexorably forward to push the animal across its cage, one centimeter at a time.

  Samuel stepped farther into the building, drawn by helpless fascination to the creature’s plight. From his position on the ground, looking up through the double grate of the fence and the upper floor, Samuel did not have the best view of the unfolding action. But he could see well enough. And he could hear everything: the thump of the animal’s shoulder as it launched itself against the steadily advancing panel, its feet scrabbling vainly against the frictionless floor, the pleading, wheezing breaths that quickly faded as exhaustion took hold; all of these sounds juxtaposed against the conspicuous absence of noise from the panel—no humming or churning of gears, no scraping of metal, just the slow and silent march of steel, as inevitable as time itself.

  Its shoulder pressed against the metal barrier, the creature’s hindquarters entered the hole in the far wall first. A sudden whirring and grinding emanated from beyond the wall. For just a moment, the animal fell silent and its forelegs stopped pawing at the ground. Then the hush was broken by the most horrible sound Samuel had ever heard. The creature cried out in wordless agony, in one loud, long scream of pain and fear, a sound many humans have long believed animals cannot make, the sound that once raced, in an instant, through the minds of tens of thousands of men as they felt the cold steel of the guillotine blade bite into the backs of their necks and saw Death, hooded and menacing, lurking before them. Yet that silent cry lasted but an instant in the mind of the dying, while the sound made by the creature in that secret room went on and on and on. Its hind legs already devoured by the hole, the creature spun its forelegs over the slick grate and screamed and screamed. Samuel raced to the fence, dug his fingers into the spaces between the metal wires, and began to climb. But there was nothing he could do. He had not climbed half a meter when the screams became too much, his limbs grew weak, and he could climb no higher, go no closer.

  He fell to the ground and just managed to catch himself on his feet. The screams grew louder and louder, limitless in their sheer panicked anguish. He jumped and danced to peer through the grate and fence that obstructed his view, though he was not sure he really wanted to see. The cries stopped. There was nothing, not even an echo, as though that dark hole had swallowed up sound itself. The creature was gone, save for a faint red mist and a few tufts of the coarse, brown fibers
of its body that wafted down through the grate. Samuel’s knees buckled and he felt as though something inside of him had imploded and collapsed. Inside the cage, a trap door slid open and a new creature stepped out of the floor, spasmodically shaking its body to remove some unknown liquid from its fur. Samuel scarcely noticed. He stumbled to the door and out into the sunlight of the meadow. Penny stood there, and he did not know if she had followed him inside. He fell to his knees and was sick in the grass.

  * * *

  Penny stood over Samuel as he shuddered and spat the acrid taste from his mouth. In truth, he had not yet considered exactly what happened to the creature as it was pushed into the hole. His sickness was a purely visceral reaction to the horrifying sights and sounds of the incident. But now the grim realization dawned on him. And perhaps he had recognized it the whole time, perhaps the thought had lingered in the depths of his subconscious throughout the whole gruesome scene, for he knew now with absolute clarity that the creature in that room was no more, that whatever happened to it in there was the same thing that happened to the male who drank the bad river water and collapsed to the ground with his eyes wide and staring and fell into a sleep that was not really sleep, a sleep from which he would never awake.

  Samuel gazed down at his own vomit in the green grass, then looked up and saw the blurry images of the brown creatures stooping to eat that same grass, and as the colors smeared together in a terrible, ugly mixture, at last Samuel knew what he had eaten three times a day, every day, for the whole length of his existence. He felt as though he would be sick again but his stomach was already empty. Several minutes passed before he recovered enough strength to stand. He needed to get away from it all, the room, the creatures, whatever colonists might still be lurking about. As best he could, he hobbled across the colony to the fence line and sat with his back against one of the posts. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, forced his thoughts over the sickness coursing through him. The late morning sun streamed down, hot and dry, upon his forehead. The wind died in the air.

  He could not ignore the frightful origin of the meal cakes. Yet he knew nothing else. They were all he had ever eaten. And the duty that had plagued him the last several days, the thought of the whole colony thrown into starvation, crept up around the edges of his disgust. Several hundred colonists required food each day. And even with his new system of distributing equal cakes at three different meal halls, Samuel knew not every colonist received a normal ration. Yet now that he had learned something of how the meal cakes were made, to condemn those strange creatures to that same fate, that same fear and agony and death, one after another, day after day…

  He felt Penny’s hand on his arm, opened his eyes and saw her seated beside him, her mouth twisted into a wrenching look of concern such as he had never seen before. Whatever might be said of these creatures, however innocent they might be, by all indications they were not like her. They would never be able to converse with him as she did, they would never care about him as she did, they would never value him for his mind as she did, because they did not speak, listen, love, think or value as she did, as he did. Yet still they did not deserve what end would eventually befall them. And for this he respected them all the more, thanked them reverently in his thoughts. Perhaps that was the difference: that he could respect them, thank them for their sacrifice. He did not know. But he could not let Penny suffer as they suffered. For now he could think of no other answer. But he vowed to himself to find another way, a better way.

  So with Penny’s help, Samuel herded the animals back into the cages in the small buildings behind the meal halls. Fortunately, each pen had a gate in the fence, so it proved only somewhat difficult to corral the creatures in the general vicinity of the nearest building and lead them one by one into the room and back to their cage. Several times throughout the long day, Samuel led an animal into the pen just as the dreadful mechanical symphony of motion began. And despite his urge to flee, Samuel forced himself to stay and watch each time, so that he would never forget the manner in which his own life was sustained. He skipped the midday meal, not having any appetite for that food. Penny did the same.

  Yet by the time evening came, he felt hungry again. He could not bring himself to eat the colony’s prepared meal cakes, so he took a box of plants from one of the rooms, broke off the stalks and ate them. They felt odd in his mouth, but were not offensive, and they satisfied his hunger. He and Penny left the last few creatures in the meadow and passed out meals. Samuel worked with a detached numbness, breaking and recombining the cakes with dreamlike, automated motions. By the time the sun began to set over the colony, one herd remained. An hour later, in the moon-splashed darkness, the task was complete. A peaceful stillness returned to the colony, the ugliness of the day safely confined once more to the seven little buildings spread out across the silver meadow.

  XXI

  Several days passed before Samuel was able to eat the meal cakes again, and a few meals more before he grew reaccustomed to their taste and texture. Eating now required a conscious effort on his part; he still felt a slight twinge in his stomach, deeper than nausea, whenever he bit into a meal cake, and he knew this sensation would never completely fade. He was glad of that, and each time he ate, he reminded himself that he was alive only because so many other living creatures had suffered and died, and that he must somehow find a better way to survive.

  Samuel and Penny continued to distribute meal cakes at each of the three meals and sleep the rest of the day. At night they patrolled the colony, but there was no more excitement. They did it because the colony was peaceful and cool, and because it had become routine. The faint stabs of starlight and the wan thumbnail of the new moon provided scant illumination, but by now Samuel and Penny knew each rise and fall of the meadow to their cores. They could walk as comfortably in utter darkness as in daylight. It was easy to get lost in this blindness, their muscle memory bearing them safely forward into black space, into soft gusts of wind and the tranquil silence of the womb.

  Almost a week after the appearance of the bizarre four-legged creatures, Samuel awoke from his afternoon slumber well before the bells sounded for the evening meal. Though he had walked the colony the whole of the previous night, he was not tired. His energy had returned. He dug the eight scraps of paper from his pocket and spread them out on the floor next to his bed. He saw at once that five of the images could be matched up with one another to give two complete rectangles.

  Doing so left three scraps of paper he still could not connect with any of the others.

  The pictures remained on Samuel’s mind throughout the rest of the day and into the night. Penny spoke to him occasionally as they walked through the colony, but her words slipped around his other thoughts, his mind fixated on the pictures. If he could unlock their meaning, he could get to the bottom of the attacks. Samuel could scarcely see the images held in his hands, but at this point he could not forget them. He could almost feel the contours of the lines, waxy smooth on the rough fibers of the paper. But their significance remained a mystery. There seemed little for him to do but wait—wait for either a new scrap of paper to complete one or more of the drawings, or for a new challenge that would give him something to do, something new to learn, and hopefully bring him one step closer to the enemies of the colony.

  Another night passed without incident. Samuel and Penny distributed food at the morning meal and retired to the nearest sleeping hall. Samuel awoke shortly before midday. He yawned and stretched and sat up in his bed. A scrap of paper fluttered to the floor as he stirred. Someone must have placed it atop his blankets as he slept, but the hall was empty, save for Penny curled up on her side in the next bed, the gentle curve of her back swelling out the sheets with each long breath. The paper bore a strange symbol, and its torn edges fit with another picture to make a third complete rectangular drawing. Yet Samuel could make no sense of it.

  The day wore on without further event. Samuel served the food at the midday and evening meals wi
th a faint tug of anticipation in the back of his thoughts. He caught himself almost longing for a new attack, for any break in the humdrum rhythm of the past few days. That night, the weather in the colony began to change. Around midnight, a noticeable chill arose in the air. Clouds rolled in and covered the night sky, blocking out the sliver of the moon and obscuring the last traces of light. It seemed there would be unexpected rain the next day. But the weather stayed dry and the air grew even colder as the night wore on. A few hours before dawn, Penny and Samuel wrapped themselves in some bedding from one of the sleeping halls. Little silver crystals covered the grass, stung their toes and crunched underfoot as they walked. By the time the sun rose behind the gray clouds, it had become so cold they were forced to take refuge inside one of the sleeping halls.

  The other colonists began to stir around this time. The earliest risers opened the door and immediately rushed back inside, driven by the frigid air. As the entire hall awoke, a frightened whisper spread throughout the room. The clouds grew darker, even as the sun rose out of the horizon, but still it did not rain. The wind picked up outside and whistled through the cracks in the windows and shook the door on its hinges. Then, just as the colony’s bells sounded for the morning meal, a soft trickle of white powder began to fall from the sky. No one dared venture outside for a meal. They sat, swaddled in their beds, and watched this strange phenomenon with gaping eyes and trembling fingers.

  After about fifteen minutes, Samuel went to the door and opened it slightly. An icy wind rushed into the hall and sent most of the colonists diving all the way under their covers. Samuel peered outside. A thin layer of the strange white powder covered the meadow, and more of it continued to fall from the dark clouds above. He reached down and scooped a handful of the unknown residue off the ground. It stung his palm with cold. Upon closer inspection he noticed the material was not powder at all, but many fine, white crystals. He held this odd substance until his hand began to burn from the cold, then brushed it away. His palm was wet. He withdrew inside and shut the door. Samuel looked at Penny, sitting up in her bed, wrapped in her blankets. She stared back at him. He did not know what to do.